RESEARCH: BBFC Film Classification

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PLANNING: Mock Magazine Final Draft

This is the final design for my mock magazine. For the actual design I will of course have to use my own image and my own headlines. This is just to show the basic layout that i will use.

The layout of the magazine was fairly typical

The masthead is one of the most important features of a magazine. The usual conventions of a masthead are that it is very large, bold

I have taken into consideration the points that were made in the focus group and tried to follow what was said. This included filling up most of the clear space. I have corrected this by adding in new headlines: 'Best Films of the 90s,' 'Win Wall Street Premiere Tickets,' which i placed on a banner. Another point made was that the text used previously for the main headline should be changed to a bolder font and made larger. Originally it was the same font as the masthead which meant it wasn't as effective.

RESEARCH: Magazines

Before I began creating my magazine it was important to do research into published magazine covers. This allowed me to understand the codes and conventions of magazine covers.

Empire Magazine is currently the market leader of film magazines. Therefore I thought that I could use some of their previous covers as a guideline for my own.

I thought this was a highly effective front cover. When I first looked at it, I noticed that the first thing i was drawn to was the gun before the headline 'Public Enemies'. I would've thought that the the masthead would be what I was originally drawn to. However in this case, due to Empire being such a massive magazine they are able to rely on the headline drawing in new customers rather than the name of the magazine as people are already familiar with the name of the magazine.

I also noticed that Johnny Depp's head was covering most of the M and P in Empire. This again is due to Empire having such confidence in the public knowing their name. This of course is only possible in a magazine that is very well known. Therefore it is not a good idea to do it to the same extent in my own magazine.

There is very little white space on the cover, as most of it is covered by headlines and pictures. There is the main headline 'Public Enemies' which is just below the centre of the page, but there is also a second smaller headline 'Heroes of 2010' which runs down the right hand side of the layout.

RESEARCH: Horror Films

In preparation for filming and planning of the storyline, it is vitally important to properly understand the horror genre and the conventions and techniques used in a teaser trailer. This can easily be done through the use of YouTube. Loads of teaser trailers can be easily viewed on the site.

SAW 3D

The teaser is very typical of the horror genre. The first thing it opens with is the certification image, it is a necessity for all trailers and is something that will have to be followed in my own film. The production studios follow it straight away before any footage is shown.

The trailer itself consists of very quick cuts which last around a second each. A fade in and out technique is used for each shot.

Short captions are used to break up the quick fire shots, 'Every master craftsman' and 'All true geniuses'. The intent of these is to hint towards the themes of the film and not give any of the storyline away.

The shots tend to consist of scenes showing lots of emotion, e.g. shouting, screaming, crying etc. but never the cause of it, due to the nature of a teaser never giving away too much. The is no soundtrack played over the top of it. The only sounds that exist are the screams, shouts and the sound effects of the machinery. As well as these, there are also seemingly random eerie sound effects also which help to fill in shots with no sound.

As SAW 3D is part of a long series, it has built up a fan base over time, as a result of this they are able to conceal more details than other one off films because people know what to expect from it.

A Nightmare on Elm Street

The editing for this teaser differs quite a lot to the way the Saw trailer had been done. It begins with several long cuts which all belong to the same part of the film. The Saw trailer instead uses very short clips from random parts of the film. Therefore this trailer doesn't follow the conventions of a trailer as strictly as it begins to give an idea of the storyline rather than just the themes involved. Nearer towards the end of the film, the editing does become a lot quicker and also uses shots from different areas of the film in the same way that Saw does.

The trailer is also just over 2 minutes long, twice as long as the Saw teaser. This is a lot longer than a typical teaser and near to being as long as a main trailer.

Paranormal Activity

The original Paranormal Activity had a budget of just $15,000, yet managed to gross almost $108 million. The low budget means that it is a good film to research. Obviously although it is low compared to Hollywood budgets, $15,000 is still way too much compared to our sort of budget available. Never the less, it would be helpful to understand certain techniques used to keep the budget down.

The teaser is filmed in a very unique way by choosing to show shots of the cinema audience reactions to certain parts of the film. It does still show clips of the film though only a few. Of course this technique was used due to the low budget, yet still proved to be highly effective as it was unable to rely on star quality of the actors, directors or it's brand name.